Left and right agree on critiquing higher education

by VanessaVaile

Two highly visible commentary sources slammed American higher education this week. Interestingly, each came from the opposite end of the nation’s political spectrum.

Left-liberal Salon ran an article by Thomas Frank with the polemical title “Congratulations, class of 2014: You’re totally screwed”. It’s a furious screed, starting off with outlining the economic problems facing this month’s graduates. Frank moves on to hit the adjunctification of the professoriate, pausing to note a decline in scholarship.

He wraps things up with a jeremiad:

The rest of us need to ponder how to stop this insane situation from getting any worse. We might begin by understanding college less as a mystical place of romance and achievement and more as a cartel or a predator, only a couple of removes from a company like Enron or a pharmaceutical firm that charges sick people $1,000 per pill (emphasis added).